


High Roads and Low (formerly The Long Road Home)

by plushbug



Category: The Huntsman (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-04 21:43:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6676471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plushbug/pseuds/plushbug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This started out in 2015 on FFNet as a sequel to "That First of Days After", under a working title of "The Long Road Home"...a title I've since learned is held by at least two legitimate novels as well as any number of other fics spread across any number of other fandoms.  Hence the title change!  Its backup here is mostly to cover the likelihood that within the next few months, its content may be running a bit hotter than FFNet's mandate allows.</p>
<p>For anyone trying to figure out where this fits in the real-world scheme of things, it's a branching AU from SWatH, which does not in any way intersect with "Winter's War".  For anyone who hasn't read TFDA, Jeff Bowyer is an OC I've rung in as Anna's husband.  Imagine Phil Harding back around 1975, and you'll be near enough the idea.</p>
<p>TFDA ended with Snow and Eric agreeing to part for a year and a day, in the interests of securing each other's safety in the uncertain new world they'd created. The most certain thing I still have to say about it is that at the end of it all, they will end up together. I just don't plan on making it easy. Because oh, COME ON. WHERE WOULD BE THE FUN IN THAT?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue / Coronation Day

**Prologue**

In the sanctuary of the Aos Si, Mab's oracle raised her head, and turned to stare at the child acolyte who stood at the foot of the steps, below the Pool of Vision.

"The Black Queen is fallen," she said, "her iron crown to the furnace, her body to the pyre. A maiden sits upon a throne twice hers, once stolen, and the destiny of both her realm and ours may rest on the use she makes of power she does not yet know she possesses."

She paused. "Tell our lady," she said, and the girl turned and ran.

**Chapter 1 – Coronation Day**

When the cathedral doors were thrown open, Eric stepped back from the sunlit aisle where he had stood and twitched his hood forward over his head. Then, ducking a little to hide his height, he slipped into the edge the crowd as it began to spill out and down the wide gallery towards the forecourt stairs.

As soon as he passed those doors himself, he dropped back into their shadow and made his way at a fast walk along the narrow gallery that led beside the towering hall next door, leading into the second courtyard. Down the stairs then, and across the yard as swiftly as he could go.

It was the work of moments only to get his Dane-ax and the belt with his hand axes from the corner under the bed where he'd slept the previous night. He left one of the small gold coins from his purse on the bed, for his hosts—family, he supposed now, so far as he might say he had any. Then back across the court for a brief visit to the castle kitchen, where he collected a loaf, cheese, and a few links of dried sausage into his pockets from one of the trays the scullions were now setting in order to be borne up shortly to the hall, and he was ready to leave.

He crossed back into the forecourt through the south door by the granaries, circling through the throng of common folk now gathering round the foot of the forecourt stairs. Here he had the cover of the giant trebuchet, the charred ruin of which still sat to the side of those stairs, and he might also thank the enterprise of those who had pulled an arc of wagons around the edges of the crowd, that they might climb up for a better view. He walked faster, as the murmuring of the crowd gave way to cheers among the nobles now lining the staircase three and four deep. A glance told him the knights of the queen's honour guard were descending to space themselves evenly the length of the range, and it could only be moments before Snow White would begin her passage after them.

It was easier than he'd hoped, not to look back as he went. Beyond enough to have been present in the chapel. Unease still tightened his insides at the thought of it: coronations were for the royals and nobility, and even if it had been proclaimed that all men might come to this one who'd borne arms in the attack the day before, that had felt like little enough surety in his case, of any safety. None of anything at all, he suspected, if Duke Hammond had seen him and thought to have him seized. Questioned, as to what had given him the presumption that day before, to push through to the princess' side, and make sure of riding with her that last stretch to the castle gates. That and the sass to flirt a little, and be there to distract her a little from the worry in her eyes at that last step before word was given to begin the assault. He might have had an answer for that— _am I the last man here to remember she's still but a girl, and might well stand knowing herself not alone, at such a time?_ —but it would defeat the purpose of their discretion, for that to happen.

_I'd be lucky,_ he thought, _if it didn't end with her havin' to rescue me again._

Neither of them could really afford to be known that far friends.

It had been an uneasy matter too, fearing that either his nerve might yet fail, or hers, if at any point they'd come close enough to see each other this morning. Could he have looked her in the eyes again, and still left? He must, so yes, he could, but he was less sure of how she might take it even now. But hearing no change in the crowd's murmuring as he hastened through the open gate, he was confident she would not see him go.

And then it was as he'd imagined yesterday: off up the slope towards the village, into the brightness of a sparkling spring day. No better time than this, to try going home.

The village was as deserted as he'd expected. No question every last soul would be gone down to the castle this morning, by any means they could get there. It was deserted enough that he could even risk passing by the house where he had formerly rented a room, to collect the last of his things before moving on, steadily, towards the edge of town.

At least, it was deserted until he passed the ruin of the gatehouse that had once stood over the main road into town, and a cheery voice said, "Well, ahah! About time you were along, lad!"

"Jeff?" He pulled up short and swung round to find Anna's husband stepped out beaming from where he had been lounging against what was left of the gate. Ready for travel, from the pack slung across his shoulders, and the staff in his good hand, and not alone either, for behind him a smaller man in a monk's kirtle led a modestly laden mule.

"What the devil are you doing here?" Eric backed up as the pair proceeded into the road beside him.

"Well, waitin' for you, aren't we?" Jeff stepped past, giving him a sharp eye sideways, and his companion paused with a smaller, tightish smile. "Waitin' for you to be done sayin' good-bye to our new queen, who I'm guessing you've seen crowned now, and come on along—"

"Jeff, I've no plans but to be goin' on alone."

"Well, plans are great things aren't they, but how often do they come out as planned?" Jeff gestured towards his companion. "This here's Brother Anthony, by the way. He's a friend of mine down from the library at Hammond's, come to see we neither of us come to any harm, and because he's got an interest in stories."

"Aye." Eric gave the shorter man a curt nod. "Then he's missed the one that matters today, though if you were to hop on that mule, Brother, and trot it back to the castle, you might still see some of it."

"Oh, there'll be enough witnesses to that one," said the little man brightly, "and Master Ambrose there to draw pictures as it happens. I'd sooner be around for things most won't see."

"Like me walkin' off over the hills by myself," said Eric. He met Jeff's cheerful gaze, a touch more grim. "I mean it, Jeff. You've no business being anywhere right now, but back there in that crowd with Anna beside you,"

"Oo, no, there you're wrong." Jeff leaned the staff into his shoulder, and reached with his good hand to shift his injured arm in its sling. "I'm no' fond of crowds at the best of times, and as I can't enjoy myself playin' music with the rest afterwards at our new queen's party, I've already told my girl I'd as soon come along and see to you." He paused. "You're going to need me, lad, to get away from here, you know. I'm the one as knows the watchword you'll have to give the riders patrolling by the road up ahead, because it happens to be the Duke's order that none may leave this place without it, for the next three days."

"What?"

"You notice the bells aren't ringing, either."

He hadn't, but Jeff was right. He might have expected bells, and from the other's nod, his face must have shown his surprise. "That's right. Her Majesty's order, and the Duke's. You can bet she's asking that crowd right now, to help her keep all this quiet a few days yet.

"That might be the biggest castle in the country, but it's only one," Jeff went on, "and there are plenty more, a good few near as large, that the Black Queen's men still hold." He laid a finger alongside his nose. "The longer we can keep it from any of them, that she no longer rules, the easier it'll be to get them back."

"Aye." Eric considered him, then nodded. "If any get their gates shut, it'll take more than the Duke's army to winkle them out."

Jeff pointed to a rider now approaching along the road from the forest. "Hence my friend Ollie and a dozen or two like him, riding patrol back and forth, with an archer or two in the bushes, to go with each one." Jeff smiled. "Or more." He laughed, when Eric stared at him. "Or less. D'ye think I should tell ye the truth of it, even if I knew?" He waved, and the horseman dropped his lance point aside, as they closed on each other. "Eh, Ollie! Havin' a busy day yet?"

"No more'n in a graveyard at midnight," said the horseman, bringing his horse to a stop. "So, Jeff, have ye a word for me, then?"

"Angelus," said Jeff. "For the first of the bells you haven't heard ringing this past hour."

"That'll do," Ollie nodded. "Coronation's done, then?"

"Aye." Jeff jerked a thumb at Eric. "Now Brother Anthony and I are just seein' Eric here home for a day or two, but we'll all be back by Sunday."

"Na," said Eric. "They'll be back, but I won't."

"An' we can talk about that as we go," said Jeff, and patted him at the shoulder. "Come along now an' leave our man to watchin' for no one more, we'll hope."

"At least tell me this wasn't Her Majesty's idea," Eric said, as they continued on into the woodland, and he began to look for signs of the old trail towards the western coast. "I'd expect she'd mind her word better than that."

"It's no'," said Jeff. "I've had no word from her in any of this. Nor had my Anna, when she put me up to it."

Eric favoured him with a skeptical eye. "When did she do that?"

"Oh, sometime round that hour in the night after we'd both enough sleep to do us a while, and no one else was stirrin'—an' for what it's worth, when she suggested it, I asked!— _'now, would it be that nice young girl you've been tending, has put you up to such an idea_?'—and she said no, and I believe her."

"An' then I'll wager she distracted you from askin' any further questions," said Eric, and Jeff grinned evilly.

"No!—she'd already done that." He laughed when Eric looked round at him. "Eh, lad, you don't think we were awake at midnight t'be talking about _you_ , do you? With neither of us having seen the other since mid-winter, I should say not! We'd better to do, an' made fine distraction of it, by the time we got round to the matter of it bein' a few days before we might see as much of each other again."

"An' why should that be?"

"Because she'll be sticking close to Her New Majesty a few days, until she sees she has more than green girls to mind her! Young Greta and the two we're leavin' from our village, Catherine and Lisl, they'll do well enough to do anythin' she says, but they've no more sense than she of what's proper to her state. Not that Anna can say she's any great sense of it, either—but at least as a married woman with a few years on all of 'em, she can keep 'em out of too much mischief."

"Huh." Mischief as such wouldn't have been his first expectation of Snow White, but that might only be Anna's word for it. He shook his head and pushed on through the branches.

"What? You don't think she'll have the gift for it?" Jeff asked, following him.

"No!" Eric didn't look back. "She—" he stopped, then, and did. "She'll not try to, Jeff, she's a good lass as far as that goes. It's just she gets distracted an' wanders off a lot. Mostly, unless she's got a bee in her bonnet about anything in particular, she'll look first to see what anyone else wants of her."

"Eh, well, that's most of what Anna said." Jeff turned to hold branches aside, as Anthony led the mule along behind them. "That she'd be a good girl an' not ask or send after you, as she promised." He dug in with his staff and followed after.

"That still begs the question of why she's sendin' you! Anna, that is," Eric added, as the older man once more caught up with him. The trail was still clear enough, here under the trees, where the bushes were thinner.

"Eh, well, she's not done with you, is she?" Jeff peered pointedly around at his bad side. "She wants you back in a day or two's time, to have another look at that gash in your side, and see it's mendin'. How's that all doing, anyway?"

"Well enough to go on" He sighed, and trudged on. "Hurts, but it's clean, an' dressed tight enough to help."

"Couldn't get your arm up this morning, could you?"

"How'd you know that?" he asked, and Jeff chuckled.

"Your hair's tied back sloppy an' at collar, not crown. After all the pullin' you did yesterday, at that gash in your side, ye couldn't get that hand high enough to catch it higher," he said.

"Doesn't mean I'm goin' back." Eric set his jaw and swung steadily on up the path.

"Does, though, if I don't like the colour of those bandages by nightfall." Jeff dug in with his staff, to keep up with him, and held up a warning finger at his glance. "An' no glowerin' at me about it, ye know it's not ill-meant!"

"No, but it's no' happening," Eric muttered. "I'm no' goin' back."

"An' there's another matter," Jeff went on. "Third day from now, there's a big service planned for the church down by the village. Outside in the churchyard if the weather's fine, wi' the Archbishop presiding, along wi' all his party, an' Her Majesty an' all the lords to hand, to say a memorial mass for all that fell retakin' that castle an' crown. Not a funeral as such, for they'll have 'em all buried by then, but a service and a readin' out of the names for all they can learn names of, our lads and the Black Queen's dead as well, as it's been turning out that more of them have been ours to begin with, than we counted on." He swung his staff out to clear a branch aside. "You need to be there for that service, lad."

"Oh, I don't think so!" Eric said. "They've no need of me, an' you just said it yourself, Her Majesty's to be there."

"As if that were to be any matter for you to be concerned about, you not bein' part of her party!" Pursuing him into the more open ground, Jeff rapped his arm. "Stop a moment, lad." When Eric did, Jeff reached to catch the edge of his hood, and flipped it up over his head again. He pointed an admonishing finger. "Even if it's fine, it'll be a cool day. You but keep that hood up and stay amidst a few of our taller lads, an' she'll never know. Why should she look for you, anyway?"

"She shouldn't! But I shouldn't be there, anyway!" Eric threw the hood back again. "What? Take such a chance for no reason? Risk having anyone who might see me bear any word back to her, of me bein' there? For nothing? For no one else to whom it'll matter?"

"That's the way you think now, an' it needs to be mended!"

"I see no other way I should think!" He shook his head. "There's none to whom it'll matter whether I'm there or not, and if I can get home today, I see no reason why I should march back again tomorrow or a day later, to be there for it."

"Then you might just consider how it may do _you_ some good," said Jeff. His tone edged. "I don't say there's any to whom it should matter, Eric, whether you're there or not. But if you turn down that chance to stand and witness with all of us that were there, what it cost to make it happen, do you think none will ever remember the fact? You think none'll wonder or gossip, about how that adds to all the rest?"

Eric stared at him, his insides going cold. "What're you talking about?!"

Jeff met his look with a grim expression.

"If you want a future in this land, son, on the same footing as every other man who's fought to win its freedom, the least you can do is be seen showing proper respect for those who've given their all for it.

"Fail in so little," he went on, "and you can bet on it being a damn sight easier for all of us who've done better these last ten years, in facing the fact upholding the law weren't the same as upholding the right, to ask how you could miss that fact as long as you did. Until ol' Fate dropped the princess right into your hands, in fact."

"Aye." Eric nodded. "Well, that gives me your measure, then. A righteous man, Jeff, who'd have no free men in your world but those who are righteous. Like you. So I can see I've no chance, have I?" He turned away and pushed on, ignoring the pain in his side, and avoiding the other's gaze. "You'd ha' got on well wi' my father."

"An' that's a problem for you, is it?" Jeff followed, closing on him again. "That righteous men such as I might ask, 'what did you do, while Ravenna ruled?' and think less of you havin' any power to resist, and doin' nothing?"

At that, the cold in him ran hot, and Eric turned on him.

"I've as much right to live in this land as you do, an' be let live, so long as I do obey the law," he said. "If you think to treat every man as wolfshead, who's not done as you an' your friends, or who doesn't think as you—or who doesn't think the sun shines out your arses, either!—you'll have none left but those her rule reduced to slaves."

"That's not answerin' the question, is it?" Jeff slammed the butt of his staff into the ground between them.

"You'd be more convincing, Jeff Bowyer, if your bein' alive to ask that question hadn't more to do with you having sheltered behind Hammond's skirts all these years, than anything else." Eric let his expression slip to a sneer. "Resist Ravenna? She'd no need to care anything for you, with him keeping you an' all the other hotheads safely penned!

"And what kind of decision was it, to leave your families to face the danger? How many women lost did it take, before they saw scarring their faces must be the price of being left alone?"

"You've no right to cast such aspersions, when you never tried to do better!"

Eric glared at him. "Maybe I'd never any better chance, but at least I stood my own ground."

"Like you're doin' now? Runnin' off home to this property of yours, miles from anything, hopin' the world may leave you alone there?" Jeff shook his head. "It's no start, lad, and it's no help for anything your new queen wants for you, either."

_"Leave her out of it!"_

"I can't do! She's in it, like it or no!" Again Jeff thumped his staff. "In a year's time, Huntsman, she'll want to see you back! Can you afford to pass up any chance in the meantime, to prove you're worth her knowing?"

"On the terms you'd offer?" Eric shook his head. "With my past hanging forever like a blade over my future? As what you're telling me, is that it always will, here, because you and your friends'll see to it that it does."

"There's a difference between upholding the law, and upholding the right! An' you're dreamin' if you think none will ever now weigh one against t'other, an' ask which you preferred."

"Oh!" he said, voice going rough on him, "I'll no' make that mistake!" He stepped back, momentarily unable to say more, and swept out his ax to block the gesture when Jeff unstepped his staff and followed again. "I expect you and yours will be doing a lot of that," he said. He swung abruptly away, not trusting what more either face or voice might reveal. "It's time for you to go back, now. I've had enough—stood as much of this as I will!"

"Ah," said Jeff, behind him, "well, you're wrong about that, too!" and hearing him reach, and feeling the grip on his sleeve, Eric spun in the direction of the pull, into a hooking left-handed punch that caught the other hard on the side of the head. It cost both his side and shoulder, but Jeff went down like a stone and he could only think, as he drew back gasping and set his teeth against the pain, _not badly done_. His aim with a blow was undoubtedly better sober than drunk.

"I didn't ask for you, either," he said to Brother Anthony who, past a startled murmur, had no more than stopped in silence, holding his mule's reins. "So when he comes to, you can get him over that mule of yours, and take him back to the castle, and I'll ask you to tell his wife for me, that I regret having to serve her man so. I'd thank her again for her kindness, but I'll make my own way from now on, and she'll likely not see me again."

"I'll do that," said the other, and Eric nodded and turned away up the path.

 


	2. False Hopes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eric makes for the home he remembers, but it's been years...how much remains?
> 
> Note: a short glossary is provided at the end of this chapter, for medieval-era terms used. If you hit a word or phrase you've never heard before, it may be worth checking there for it.

**Chapter 2 - False Hopes**

_There's a difference between upholding the law, and upholding the right! An' you're dreamin' if you think none will ever now weigh one against t'other, an' ask which you preferred._

Well, the truth for Eric was that he had dreamed. What point now, after ten years' of Ravenna's poisonous rule, in saying anything to anyone past 'let bygones be bygones'? Let any who'd survived go forward and be judged as whoever they should prove to be hereafter. Too late for recrimination to mean much, Eric thought. But also too much to hope that none would prefer crying and recriminating to getting on with rebuilding their lives. It was enough to make him wish he could have refilled his flask with more than ale that morning. The thought of having to deal with the likes of Jeff and his likely friends, in this new world they'd made, was enough to make any man want stronger drink, who wasn't one of them. Strong enough to take the edges off, and blur memory past his ability to care about it. Even if it wasn't any answer.

He'd have to put it by and move on. There'd always be men of unstained morality in the world who'd feel they'd a right to lord it over all the rest, for no better reason than those rest not being them.

"If I've no better to hope for than that," he said aloud, "I'll do better alone."

_But I promise, you look to make any who lived within the Queen's law pay for doing—as though it ever served us better than hiding behind Duke Hammond's skirts with you!—and it'll be a long time before this land knows peace._

Being truthful about it, he'd grant men like Jeff and his fellows did have some right to call themselves his betters. They'd taken up arms as best they could and at least looked to go to war, once they knew their rightful king had been killed and his position usurped by a witch. Even more so the wives who took to scarring both themselves and their children to protect themselves from her. Even he might call them better than those who like him in the day, had shrugged and called it all meaningless or else nothing they had any power to resist. Or felt the price of resistance in terms of communities razed and their loved ones killed could only be too high. Or felt themselves secure enough in their positions and property to be able to outlast Ravenna. Or even only hoped to secure themselves through her ignorance of them. That had been close enough to his hope, as the embittered old soldier he had been at twenty. Returning to their cursed and blighted land a whole five years into her dark reign, it had mattered little to him who sat on the throne. He'd no reason to believe that any who'd seek royal power should be trusted with anything.

But in the end, how fair was their condemnation? All well to cry for upholding the right, but facing a wrong with both magic on her side and an army, and the ability to mow down anything in her path, there was a point past which it wasn't fair to ask that anybody take on martyrdom with you. People had to be let free to run or hide, or make whatever peace they could with it.

The forest was thinning now, as he approached the top of the ridge he'd been climbing this past hour, and shortly he broke through from the trail onto its windswept crest. From here the trackway still ran clear along the top of the ridge towards the sea to the south, and on that firmer ground the going would be easier. By mid-afternoon he should reach the spring by the track that led down its other side to the west, towards the valley and home.

He could say to that place he was always bound to return. The heart of his grandfather's dreamed-of manor, that first hide of land stretching a quarter mile wide along the coast, most of a mile back along the little river that ran through it, and up into the woodlands that lined the hills to its eastern side. It had been his great-grandfather's reward as an armsman, granted as a freehold in fee simple from the king himself, for saving the life of that king's son in battle. Snow White's grandfather, in fact. An arresting thought, for a moment, that now she should be not only his queen, but his personal liege lord.

Well, it shouldn't make it that much harder to evade her interest, should time and distraction not suffice. She surely shouldn't have time to do business with any of her yeomanry herself, and if he went on paying his taxes using his father's name, none should easily see the connection.

Time had made little difference to the hard track along the ridge line, but once he began to work his way down the hillside into what was left of the first rutted trail leading down to the valley, it was a different matter. It was steeper than the better road closer to the farmstead, which they'd kept wide and gently sloped enough for both wagons and herds to pass. One might just have led a pack horse by this route in days when it was less overgrown; now it was all he could do to see it, knowing it was there. But it was a more direct route to the farm proper and this past two years, the path he knew best.

Sooner there, sooner he'd know how much was left.

He'd expect the farmhouse still to be standing. His grandfather's work, most of it, though the hall at the heart of it, with its high archbraced roof, had been built in his great-grandfather's time. Neither of those two had ever built anything, but to last. The same likely held for the kitchen and buttery his father had added in Eric's own boyhood, and the tile-floored dairy they'd made of the room which had originally adjoined the north end of the hall. A year and a half since he or anyone he knew had passed that way, the condition of any of it might be uncertain past 'standing', but that centre should hold.

Indeed, he wouldn't be surprised if most of it mightn't be as he'd left it, though surely the worse for weather. The big hay barn had been sound the year he'd left. The two older longhouses still with thatched roofs, one remade as the settlement's tithe shed and the other as the sheepcote, would be worse for wear. Could be beginning to leak by now, under the steady beating of the winter storms in from the south, across the saltmarsh. Nowhere could pass unscathed where a crack through shutters or around a door might offer entrance to the damp, or any sort of windblown litter, or small animals. Birds and mice would no doubt have had their way amidst any stores or possessions left.

He had to take things carefully through one stretch where a tall birch tree had fallen slantwise across the path, forcing him to slide and then climb a foot or three down it, clinging to its branches. Reason enough once down, to rest a little. He shed his coat and rolled it in its bundle, gave brief thought to the problem of trimming the thing enough to pull it free, and decided against it. However tempted he might be, for now this wasn't a job to tackle with his ax. He'd do better with a saw, and his side and shoulder less sore, later. Still it was as good a place as any to break bread and finish the ale in his flask, and then sit a while on a mossy bank beside the trail, watching and listening to the greenwood around him.

It mightn't in fact be the best idea to even think of trying to start over at the farmstead by himself. Considering how far the fields must be on their way to overgrown by now, he might do better to work it as forest rather than farm. He'd never lost his love for the land, but he'd always preferred the woodlands. Hunting in the forest, within the law or not. Walking for miles through its rustling, sun-dappled shelter, learning the paths of every stream and the shapes of great rocks that might offer protection against the wind and rain that blew regularly in off the coast to the south. He'd spent a good part of his boyhood there, trekking about with his grandfather. A lot of gathering wood, and learning to hunt and track. Later learning from the old man, in the privacy of a sunlit clearing, his more lethal skills with an ax.

By the time he made his way through to the meadow that lay beyond the woods, the wind had picked up enough to be tossing the treetops lightly. Coming out into the silt-and-pebbles path of the dry stream bed that traced along its edge, he stopped to get his bearings on what was left of the high ground.

Miles now, from the blighted land around the big castle and the Dark Forest, in a landscape coming back to life with spring it was harder than he'd thought to see much of the settlement. The trees were taller now, bushes and saplings grown in along the road that led to it, and across fields once cleared. But yes, he knew the place. The outlines of a substantial farm were clear, and those of handful of smaller fenced acreages grouped by its gate. Through the trees stretches of the dry stone wall surrounding the farmstead were still visible, and the red-tiled roof of the house, and the one that had been Reg Weaver's, first on the left outside the gate. Nearer, between him and the beginning of that cluster of buildings, older wattle fences still marked the gardens and orchards and the pens for tenants' animals, hiding the overgrowth and ruin he knew must be there.

Best to get on.

Peace had betrayed his grandfather's hopes for the farm. He had counted on war, and the opportunities for well-rewarded service as an armsman, to bring him money through plunder and hostages taken. That, he held, should have allowed him to build the estate he had believed in his whole life. There was certainly land here, across the valley and north into the hills, which had lain untenanted since the days of plague and famine two hundred years earlier. If his opportunities had ever matched his ambitions, Grandfather would have owned it all. The stubborn old yeoman could have built a manor here the equal of any belted knight's. But for him the call to arms had only come a time or two, when King Magnus' father had needed to settle border squabbles with the Welsh. For Eric's father, it had not come at all. His interest had always been more in bettering what they had, over seeking to build it greater than they could decently manage.

It had been a source of contention between the two of them down all their days together, that his father's dreams had never extended further than that land they already held. He had argued rightly enough that it was enough to keep five families such as theirs in prosperity. Time enough to look for more, only after they had made the best use of what they had.

The best of what they had, including Eric.

It had been clear enough from his boyhood, that each had regarded him in his own way as the family's last hope.

His grandfather having lost to death the first son to whom he expected to leave his estate, had never faced with grace that his land must someday be inherited by his second boy. It had forced him to reclaim Eric's father as a youth from the Church to which he had dedicated him as a child—no greater source of joy for the son, than the father—and see him promptly married, making clear his hope was now for grandsons to redeem his dreams. Matters had not been aided when Eric's parents saw their first son stillborn, and the second dead of a fever before Eric, third and last, had passed his fourth year. There had been one miscarriage later that had come close to killing his mother, before his father had dug in his heels and told the old man to give over wishing for the family to increase. Then they had settled to quarreling in earnest over what Eric's fate should be as the last of their line.

His father would have divided his days between the church school in the town and what, as a boy, he had only seen as the grinding routine of the farm.

His grandfather, seeing him last fit representative of the family, had argued for training him in arms and committing him to the king's service as he had been committed in his youth. Or, he argued, if their king had no need of the boy, he might seek out one of the great mercenary companies to find him opportunities for glory. Glory, and with it the money to build their property to match all his forefathers' dreams for it.

His father had scoffed, but Eric had dreamed with the old man. Dreamed and trained in his skills. It hadn't taken three months past his grandfather's death, the summer he turned fourteen, for him to slip away with his ax slung across his shoulders, in hopes of making those dreams come true.

It had taken two years to face that his father was right. Three more to find the desperation in himself, to come home. Not to any prodigal's welcome: his mother was now dead and his father inclined to blame him for it. It had taken a year and some for them both to accept that the place was his fate, and at least here he could make himself useful.

Now as he came closer he could see the long line of the farmstead's hard-packed flint and limestone walls still stood, visible through the coppiced stands of alder and hazel beyond the tenants' cottages. Above the low, square line of the wall, the red-tiled roof of the main house rose clear as ever, and the darker outline of the barns and outbuildings, and the soft green tops of the trees in the orchard.

Here too, either side of the overgrown track which led to its gate, most of the cottages seemed still in better order than he'd expected. All still stood, sheltered by their own lower fences and garden and orchard plots. The Weavers' stone-built longhouse, sitting sidelong on its larger plot with back wall facing south against the wind, seemed as though it might have fared the best, but when he came by it he saw the door stood open, and the shutters at one window hung askew.

The gate to the farmstead also stood half open now, and at that he stopped. That would have taken someone some doing. He'd left that gate barred from the inside when they'd left, November before last, climbing free at the last over the wall with Reg's help and a ladder. His last act had been to shove the ladder back inside to fall where it might. Then he'd swung himself round and dropped loosely, sliding down fast in the frost-slick grass into the dry ditch below. Not a trick he'd have tried sober. Reg had pulled him up then to join that group of the last few tenants setting out with their goods and their animals towards the castle town. For a moment he'd felt it then as not before that, with only one or two willing to even hint they might come back in the spring, the settlement's time was done.

Now he turned instead to see how he'd come. From the height of the grass in the hollow way, with no sign of any passage through it except his own, he'd guess it a good while since anyone had been here. The stillness said equally that no one was here now. No sound of anything stirring, no sounds of man or beast, nothing past the wind and snatches of birdsong. No smoke from any hearth-fire either, that he could see or scent from any direction.

He still tugged the bundle of his coat squarely between his shoulders, and settled his ax in his hand before crossing onto the graveled ramp that led to the gate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Eric faces 'home' as it was, and the site of his wife's murder.
> 
> Glossary
> 
> Freehold in fee simple - Very loosely, the sort of "it's yours and your heirs hereafter" ownership we think of as normal for property owners today. Most peasants in medieval times rented their lands from their manorial lords; being granted land from the king, on this basis, would be highly unusual. Its effect is to put Eric's family into the yeomanry, at the high end of the peasant class, as small landowners.
> 
> Hide (of land) - A measure of the amount of land needed to support a peasant family. Not a highly standardized measure of either area or value, but interpreted here as about 120 acres.
> 
> For anyone interested in a look at the sort of house I'm imagining for Eric's family, a map of the farmstead, and the story's imaginary world in general, my inspiration page for this is on Pinterest dot com. Add the string below to the basic URL that ffnet won't let me include here, and "enter", to see...
> 
> msplushbug/inspiration-board-for-the-long-road-home/


	3. Truths Remembered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you can go home...but no guarantees you can face what you find.

**Chapter 3 – Truths Remembered**

Past the farmstead gate it was warmer, where walls and buildings cut the wind now picking up brisk from the seashore. Here the air was almost still, where the house with its whitewashed, dark timbered walls and smoke-stained tile roof stood solid as he remembered in the afternoon sun, its height only just beginning to shade the tangle of garden in front of it. There was illusion in that seeming changelessness, though: Eric could see light reflected through the tall, unglazed windows in the hall, that spoke of shutters open within, which should be closed. There'd be some price to pay for giving that access to the weather. But still, in the narrow strip of orchard beside it the apple trees were already showing the pink and white of this year's blossoming, and at that he sighed, for that truly was unchanged.

For the rest, all was overgrown with grass and weeds, with a winter's worth of leaves blown in to mat every corner.

And yes, he'd had visitors. The well cover lay tipped aside and a bucket fallen at the foot of its wall. Both the door to the tithe shed and the gates to stable and sheepcote stood open. So did the wide doors of the hay barn, from which he now caught a whiff of mustiness and rot. Not recent, though. From the way the gate hinges squealed when he pushed it wide, that had stood where it was since before the last autumn's rains.

He walked forward slowly, looking around. Crossed to the well and braced a hand against its rim, before reaching down for the bucket. It was dry now, but lined inside with green that spoke of standing water a good while before it had dried. Best not to use without a cleaning. He set it upright and pushed straight, side and shoulder protesting. Set his hand for a moment against the crank that should raise and lower the larger barrel within the well, and groaned internally at how it resisted his effort to shift it. There'd be a lot to do here, to put things right.

Looking up to where the roof of the largest barn stood outlined against the sky, he was relieved to see nothing much wrong the state of its thatch, or that of the lower buildings beside it. A small mercy there should be no need for any attention to roofs for a while. He'd never been any hand at thatching, and the thought of risking anything that far above his head wasn't one he could stand at present. Not with side and shoulder injured; he'd have no certainty of catching himself if he slipped. The stable and the shed beside it, that had housed the farm's small smithy, were easier to face. That and part of the timbered cattle pen that was sagging.

It would be no easier to do the work needed there, though, until his injuries healed. Just less dangerous. He'd have enough to do, just to bring the kitchen garden back to a useful state. Or enough to find the tools he'd left—the more valuable of them buried under the floor in the smithy—and put them back in order to do the job.

That presumed no mess he couldn't deal with in the house, either, and at that, he did sigh. Deal with, or live with awhile?

He reached to slide his hand along the top of the wattle fence that separated house, garden, and orchard from any animals that might be wandering, then moved on towards its open gate. Depending on what he found there, it might be easier to look at taking on one of the tenant properties instead. One of the _smaller_ tenant properties. Truth was, now he was actually facing this—

_"Dear God, Eric, you weren't joking,"_ said Sara in wonder, in memory. "This _is your farm?"_

_"Aye,"_ he'd said, and offered his hand to help her down from the cart. _"What? Did you think I was telling you stories?"_

_"Not exactly,"_ she'd said, _"but when you said you'd a farm, I thought you meant like_ these _!_ " She'd twisted round to point towards the gate, then back to look round much as he had, taking it all in. _"Not this!"_

She'd taken his hand then and climbed down, and he'd taken her round to see all of it.

_"You need a wife,"_ she had said later, and he'd smiled at that.

_"Only if you'll have me,"_ he'd said. He'd eyed her then, hopeful, until she had begun to laugh, and hugged him.

And from that summer until their third spring after, she'd been everything he could have dreamed.

Truth was, facing it now—he couldn't do this alone. As little as the prospect of setting the house in order, now that he was standing here looking up at it, made him feel cold and lost. He turned aside nearing sick, and the thought came unbidden: _I'd need a wife_. At that he froze, gripping the gate-post, stopped breathless. Then all feeling said harshly, _No!_ and with a surge of anger he swung round again abruptly, to see the whole again.

In truth that wouldn't answer. From the doors standing open that shouldn't be, to the tangle of the garden and the weed-choked lane, to the orchard where his nose was now telling him at least a season's worth of rotting apples must lie hidden in the long grass, it would take far more than any one woman at his back, to make this place thrive as it might. In any case, _no_. No. That wasn't something he could ever choose to risk again. Not here. Not even if there were ever a woman who might risk him, or imagine she might want to.

Imagination did him no kindness there, as briefly Snow White's eyes met his, her expression thoughtful, in the darkness beside a campfire. Thoughtful? Measuring now, he suspected, that dawning interest he had felt, against her own feelings. Against a girl's curiosity that neither of them should ever look to indulge.

He pushed that thought away and drew a deep breath. His young queen would hardly be the help he'd need here, in any case. It had never taken fewer than seven to keep the farm running smoothly, at least three of them men for the heavy work. Even if that was now more than he had any thought of pursuing, he'd need one or two besides himself just to restore what he could support. He sighed again and bowed head to hand to rub his forehead. Then say a pig or two, to clean up the orchard. He might in fact just stop this. _Breathe_ , and consider taking matters in hand as he could. One day at a time. One thing at a time. Then remember he now had something like three years' gold in that purse he had buried in his coat pocket, and have faith that any help needed, he might surely buy.

But there was one more thing he must face, and now was as good a time as any. _Could_ he live here again, with his memories of it all?

He could see the open ground beside the well with no worse than sorrow, whether life ever returned there or not. Here, though, turning to the path between house and garden, that led into the orchard, and the emptiness of the place, it was harder. A familiar tightness born both of knowledge and fear rose in his chest and throat, and he shook his head and turned away sharply, forcing in a breath to break it.

He'd already known cause for terror here, the day it ended. He'd seen the bodies in the space by the well, and known that Sara was missing.

He'd known then what was happening, if not why.

He'd at first not known that anything was.

When Rory McNeil's daughter Beth had come tearing across the field crying for her parents, to say there were men on horses at home, he'd been knee-deep in the river where it crossed the north pasture, dragging a reluctant ewe into the water.

They'd all turned out that day to bring their flock back from winter pasture in the hills, where the shepherds had kept them the first months of spring. The day being warm, it was best chance to see the sheep washed before shearing the next week. He'd been well distracted, until suddenly Rory was splashing in beside him to catch at his shoulder, and calling for John Michaelson, and beckoning the other men with them, crying of an attack.

Beth and her brothers had been in the woods that morning, checking on the young pigs turned loose to forage, when they'd seen men on horseback coming down the road from the ridgeway. The boys had been for running back ahead of her, to see who their visitors were, but wary, she had stopped them. The group had a look of soldiers about them, she said, eight riding two by two, with one cloaked in the lead, and two archers with short bows. What should bring soldiers to them?

They'd spread out fast as they came through the hollow way, she'd said. One of each pair had dismounted, and they'd gone to each house, and led what she thought must be everyone left in the village in through the gates at the big farm. She'd seen Sara and Betsy Michaelson, and Sara's two maidservants, she thought, come out by the well to speak with them. And then she knew not what was happening, but just as young Colum had begun to protest this was stupid and they missing all the excitement, Mistress Sara had made a sign she read as forestalling the cloaked man. She'd then spoken to a boy in the group gathered round them, and he'd turned and come running through the gates. The cloaked man had reacted then with a raised hand and a shout, and one of the archers had wheeled his horse, and taken the boy in the back with an arrow. He had fallen, and not moved.

"I think it was Edwin," she had said, "Edwin Michaelson," and John had cried out, before God, all his family were there.

There had been movement then and shouting, Beth said. She thought she had seen Sara seize a staff from one of the maids and fly at the cloaked man, and then she had dragged her brothers down in the long grass and made Ian swear to keep himself and Colum hidden and still, and slipped below the crest of the hill, and run for dear life in search of them.

It had surely been the fastest half mile he had run in his life, with Rory and John Michaelson and Gareth Archer at his heels, but too late. Far too late.

By the time they reached the road, the horsemen were no more than dust hanging at the crest of the hill, and here—sickness rose in him, in memory. It had been eleven-year-old Edwin they'd found before the gates. His mother Betsy had been struck down by the well, together with her mother, Anna Smith. Only John's youngest, baby Tom, would be left him. Gareth's father Michael, the only grown man there that morning, had taken an arrow in his heart before he could as much as draw his knife.

And he, having seen signs that spoke of Sara and pursuit—the broken staff of a billhook, her torn cap fallen in the path between garden and orchard, and the bee-skep overturned by its gate as though she'd flung it down in someone's path, and run—he had run madly in through the house. In the front door and straight through the passage out the back, praying in his heart for mercy, and crying her name.

Too late. And as ever, that pressure in his chest became a band closed round his heart, and tightened at that thought, as it had when he'd first seen her crumpled in the lane, just past the back way into the orchard, and too much blood spreading into the packed earth beneath her.

God only knew what she had hoped.

_Oh, Sara._

It had been such a small, almost delicate cut that had taken her under the line of her jaw, with the curved blade of the billhook thrown down by her hand. A blade awash in blood. He might understand that now, knowing it was Finn. She probably had slashed him. Just as he had, the first time he'd fought the bastard. He'd buried his ax in the man's side, and Finn had no more than smiled. Then he'd wrenched it out and flung it back at Eric, his sister's powers having unnaturally healed him.

Reason enough to feel as he did now, that neither of them had ever had a chance.

Seeing the front door to the house had been left closed, he sighed and rubbed his eyes, feeling nothing in the moment to move him towards it. No matter of not wanting to face those rooms again in their emptiness: he'd seen them empty before. No matter either of fearing any ghosts it might harbour, drawn to his regrets. None should be there now, that he need listen to. Not even darkness. Seeing the shutters he'd seen left open, he'd find it all lit well enough. But one way or another, going in by that front door he must face the passage going out the back. Sooner or later an open door framing his memory of finding her.

Coming to face that bare, bright stretch of ground again, on any fine day like this, so much like that one—the knot tied itself again hard in his chest, heavy around his heart. Heavy enough that he folded his better arm around himself as though to keep it simply from tearing down through him, bowing his head against the pain, and his eyes welled. He could no sooner ever see walking through the orchard again at this time of year, or out the back of it, knowing she'd fled that way, pursued to her death. Especially not now, with Finn's gloating words to ring in his ears, " _She screamed your name, but you weren't_ there."

As if he hadn't known. As if he hadn't heard her cry out in his dreams so often since, and heard her voice cut off in terror as he knew it must have done. His last prayer for sanity, not to hear his name in it. Not to know she had hoped. Because in the end, there was no way for it not still to _matter_ , that to have cried for him she must have hoped.

He pulled his hand up to brush at his eyes, and sighed. No way for it not to matter. There'd be no redemption for ever having looked away. No matter how weary he might become of that pain.

He'd never risked their room alone since, either.

How in the name of God _had_ he borne living here that whole year after, and then some?

Well, he knew the answer to that. Only by making sure he'd never run out of whiskey.

So now he must face that he hadn't it in him to bear the memory of that passage, and coming through out that door into the lane. Fact was he'd need to find it, to live here again.

He swung round and walked deliberately across the lane, to face the foldyard pens and stable on that side of the way, and stopped, drawing a deep breath. He might stand it more easily, thinking that this was less the path to the house, than to ox-pen and sheepcote.

The damage to the stable pen was less than it seemed, and the wall of the sheepcote beside it still solid. He stopped and stooped a little there to look in the open door at the cobble-floored room. It had been his great-grandparents' first longhouse a generation before, and still smelled in a muted way of the beasts long gone. It was breaking down some now, its door sagging where damp and rot had eaten into its frame, but it could still serve its purpose if needed.

Beyond it the lane angled out of sight between the dairy and the kitchen, to where it ended by the orchard gate, and he stopped again. A sturdy fence closed off the last shady enclosure and the shed in the corner where they'd kept the pigs. Then at the last, round that corner, there would be the shelter where the ox-cart had been kept. And there before it that stretch of open ground, mostly bare grit, facing the orchard gate.

He closed his eyes, and reached to brush fingertips against the brick back wall of the kitchen, and took the last few steps unseeing into the lane. Drew a breath, and felt his throat close behind it. Different or not, how should it not still be too nearly the scene burned in his mind? The end of the lane by the orchard gate. Sara crumpled all but on her face, arms thrown up as though to break her fall, one hand awash in her own blood. The long fair braid of her hair had pulled down and fallen in it, the soft brown wool of her dress soaked from collar to shoulders. Too much blood, pooling, darkening the packed earth.

"Oh no," he had said then, with the last of his breath wrung from him and run forward, stepping over her, fallen to his knees beside her, and it still felt as though his heart should stop with the knowledge of what he saw. With a soldier's certainty he had known she was dead, but he had still reached, desperate, to pull her over onto her back and into his arms. Drawn her hair back over her shoulder to fall at her back, and cried out again in pain and denial, looking down into her face. She had been so beautiful in his eyes, and she still was, but now with that terrible, doll-like emptiness in her eyes that said she was gone. That everything that mattered was gone.

He had got her eyes closed and held her then, weeping, feeling her brow go cold against his cheek, until Reg and his Emily had found them. They'd helped him get her up then, so that he might carry her in, and Emily had run ahead to clear the table in the hall for her.

His first thought had been to lay her on their bed in the upstairs room. Then he'd remembered the blue and green quilt that covered it, and known he'd need that clean for her shroud. That, and her Sunday clothes from the chest to lay her out in, and so it must be the table in the hall for her now. which could not matter to her, for as long as it took him into that hideous night, to attend to her.

He had hardly had it in him at the time, to hear the rest his neighbours had to tell him—the little good news they had, and the worse that remained. As the McNeil children had been spared through their pig-keeping, it seemed most of the Weavers' brood had been with Ted Kelly's wife Ivy and their older daughter, down on the mudflats by the sea. They'd been digging for clams, and neither seeing nor being seen, had been spared all of it. As well, the settlement's two babes were safe. John Michaelson's youngest had been found asleep in his cradle, and little Anne Kelly playing on Anna Smith's bed, where she'd been left to be tended for the morning. But three were missing: Sara's maids, Clare and Ruth, and the Weavers' eldest, fourteen-year-old Alys.

He had gone the next morning with Reg and the others, first to try to track the raiders, and then to spread the word in town and appeal for help to trace the missing girls, to those in the castle there. Futility, all of it. They'd even managed an audience with the Queen, pleading for her help to trace the raiders, and been told: it was your choice to live where you did. Live where no manor protects you and these are the consequences.

And now? He sighed and took a step forward blind, then another.

It wasn't good enough. He could know now that it'd never be enough of anything. He wouldn't say again that she'd deserved better. However this fate had come upon them, he doubted now that any could have seen it coming any better, or had any greater wit to see through it after—but what a hollow measure of justice he'd won for her in the end. Tears slipped, and he let them go. A more godly man might say that through God's grace he'd been granted a husband's right in avenging her death. But damn, he'd so much sooner have had her back.

He set down his ax, leaning it against his side, dragged hand and sleeve across his eyes, and found as he blinked, that the light was dimmer than he remembered. Less bright and bare, and he looked up as the breeze set leaves rustling above him, and bore the sharp, sweet scent of rowan into the air.

In three years, the tree by the end of the cart shed had grown taller, its branches fanning over the path. His mother's rowan; now with a daughter tree grown up straight and slender beside it, near to blocking the path to the orchard gate. Both had their leaves now, and sheltered here behind the house, were fully in flower, shading the path but for a few bright splashes of light. The ground was different too, drifted now with last season's fine brown and yellow leaves. Some still shone bright where the sunlight caught them, and among them lay clusters of the mother tree's fallen berries. Beyond them, against the wall, the hawthorne bushes had grown taller, too, and now added their own milder scent to the air.

From somewhere hidden in the branches, there came the call of a spring songbird, and he looked up as another answered, higher. Nature's answer in its continuity. It might change nothing in the facts, he thought, but at least he need not now remember this place as stark as it had been. Even if the feeling that woke first and hottest in him, looking on it now, was rage. Rage and no slight ache of violation, in the memory that places such as this were meant to be blessed. After what had been allowed in this place—if he believed in that, it might be better to level it all and call Nature a liar.

At the least—he swept his sleeve roughly again across his face, and reached in that fury for his ax. He could at least have both those trees down, and deny their falsehood here.

The last thing he could have expected in that moment was the sharp cry, and a sound of dull pounding that rang from within the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Faced with guests he might have expected, Eric needs to rethink some of his plans.
> 
> Glossary
> 
> Bee-skep - A woven basket used as a beehive. Sometimes these are still pictured on labels for honey. It's the traditional form of beehive, going back to medieval times.
> 
> Billhook - A knife with a wide, curved blade, used for pruning trees. Popular gardening tools both mounted in a short handle for use as a knife, or at the end of a long pole. For anyone who's seen the SWatH film, all the peasants Snow White sees in the ruined village, following on her escape, are all carrying billhooks.
> 
> Sheepcote - A pen with a covered enclosure for sheep. In this era, it would be normal to have most farm animals brought inside the farmstead walls at night.


End file.
